Nick and Jake and Everyone We Know

Like corporations, fictional characters are people too, my friend, as we realized when we discovered we were related to two of them. Josiah (Jeb) Bartlett, the president-hero of The West Wing, is descended from our New Hampshire ancestor of the same name who signed the Declaration of Independence. And in an episode of Scooby-Doo, Shaggy goes back to his roots, the Rogers family of Plymouth, MA, which is also our family. With this discovery came the revelation that there was no reason why fictional characters had to stick within the confines of their own books. Perhaps, like the Internet, they wanted to be free.

So in our new novel, Nick & Jake (Arcade Publishing), we gave Nick (The Great Gatsby) Carraway and Jake (The Sun Also Rises) Barnes the freedom to reach middle age, and to meet and become friends in 1953, at the height of the McCarthy Era. They also cross paths with Larry Darrell (The Razor's Edge), Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle (The Quiet American), Irving Sheinbloom (A Mighty Wind), Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) and Mary Richards (The Mary Tyler Moore Show). But while it's not widely known, there have been many other such friendships between liberated fictional characters. Here are a few:

PHOTO GALLERY

BEFORE YOU GO

Fiction Characters Who Would Be Friends

PHOTO GALLERY

Fiction Characters Who Would Be Friends

Nick and Jake and Everyone We Know

Fiction Characters Who Would Be Friends

Fiction Characters Who Would Be Friends

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THE PRODUCERS MEET THE PRODUCERS

Max Bialystock, while searching for the worst idea ever for a musical, is introduced to a young man named John Galt, who has a plan for calling all the world’s most greedy capitalists, the real producers of our society, out on strike. Convinced that no one could ever swallow such an unrealistic premise, Max puts the play, <em>Springtime for Objectivism</em>, into rehearsal, and brings it to the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Sure enough, the opening night audience walks out in disgust, but one attendee – the President of the United States, Paul Ryan – holds a press conference announcing that Springtime for Objectivism is the greatest work of genius he has ever seen. Suddenly the play is a smash hit, and corporate CEOs across America go on strike. Unfortunately, this leads to takeover of all American industries by China, and Ryan is replaced in a coup by Kim Jong-un.